Arrival: Juba, S Sudan

I Came, I Saw and I Stared
Friday, April 27


How this plane 'cruised' at 31000 ft, is not a story for the weak of heart. But they fed us well. Like sacrificial goats. Despite a maddening urge, I did not feel the bottom of my seat to find out if the flotation device was there. Ignorance can be bliss.

It was all worth it when the Nile came into view. I'm not a romantic, but I think I must've choked. All those years of reading books about how it flows northwards ... and how Alexandria is on its delta ... ok, so I don't remember much more about it, but its still time-stopping. It was narrow, silvery and flows like any other river, but I craned to keep it in sight literally until we landed.

I have to write my mother. Juba feels, looks and smells like Rajshahi - the red earth, the mud walls, and the lack of development. Its dry and dusty. The UNHCR vehicle that came to receive me has an antenna stuck up its front that I'm sure could pick up radio signals at Gliese 581 c!
Driving back, I realized. This is it. I am here. Its my life and not someone else's. The air-con inside the jeep removes you from the reality outside. Everything about the bumpy ride felt like an expedition ... an African man was driving me to a camp. How bizarre is that? I mean that felt completely bizarre to me. Except that everything around me didn't look so much like Dicaprio's Sierra Leone ... but more like Rajshahi. I suppose I was trying to process my surroundings in a framework that was known, familiar.

The only four-wheeled vehicles here are also 4W drive, and stamped with the name of the agency that they belong to. Everyone walks. We only saw a few one-storeyed brick buildings on the way. (oh wait, I think I saw a matatu ... I must be hallucinating). There are some wicker fences, and huts behind them, which could be anything from housing, to school, to NGO or clinic.
Life's very basic here. There's nothing here that you don't need ... but also some things that you do. It seemed so simple and ... undisturbed. I realized peaceful was the wrong word when a simply-written sign by the roadside read "War Child -->"